Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑May 10th, 2022, 9:51 am
Why do you express this as a binary choice? Either use emotions or use intellect? Why not both? At the same time, even? It's what humans have always done. Sometimes we use more emotions, and others, we make more use of intellect, but we do both, most of the time, in some (varying) ratio.
Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 10th, 2022, 4:14 pm
I am not thinking as you imagine. I just look at the world, millions and millions of absolute idiots making ridiculous emotional claims about topics they know nothing about, that a minute's reflection and study would correct. Have you ever checked out the "logic" of flat-Earthers or "pro-lifers"?
If you have a problem with shifting away from atavism towards intelligence, then you do not think the way I thought you did.
I don't know as much about this as I would like, given that I hope to answer your objections.
Nevertheless, I have read that AI folks seem to have an understanding that emotions give us purpose; they drive us to aim for things, to seek to achieve them. Here's a quote that seems to support such a view:
Traditional approaches to the study of cognition emphasize an information-processing view that has generally excluded emotion. In contrast, the recent emergence of cognitive neuroscience as an inspiration for understanding human cognition has highlighted its interaction with emotion.
...
Investigations into the neural systems underlying human behavior demonstrate that the mechanisms of emotion and cognition are intertwined from early perception to reasoning. These findings suggest that the classic division between the study of emotion and cognition may be unrealistic and that an understanding of human cognition requires the consideration of emotion.
Link to original article.
And here's another, taken from a review of the book "The Value of Emotions for Knowledge" (
link):
If we could assign a foil for this volume, it would be the view that takes emotions to be opposed to rationality, a view on which emotions are generally distracting, fact-twisting, misleading, and unreliable, hindering rather than furthering our epistemic goals. Most of the papers in this volume challenge this picture in one way or another.
Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 10th, 2022, 4:14 pm
Ultimately, though, the only useful role emotions will have to AI is the human interface.
See above.
You describe any reliance on emotion as "atavism", which doesn't seem to square with our current understanding of such things. I have always been a little alarmed at the intelligencists (?) who champion their preferred characteristic with the dedication of religious fundamentalists, or sciencists. If the only mental attribute we needed was intelligence, then surely evolution would've allowed the other attributes, such as emotions, to fall by the wayside? Those
unencumbered with time-wasting qualities like emotion, or even wisdom, would have succeeded beyond their peers, in the way of evolution. But it hasn't happened. Why is that, do we think?
I think it's because intelligence, untempered by our other mental attributes, is insufficient to our needs.
Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 10th, 2022, 4:14 pm
Life is replete with torture, which need not be deliberate.
Ah, OK. I had assumed that torture included intentionality, so this disagreement seems to be just a misunderstanding.